In your opinion: The top three reasons The Beatles are so important?

[Erin]

So I'm sitting with my co-worker talking about The Beatles...

I'm curious. What are your top 3 reasons they are so important. :)

discuss.

[NinjaBoy]

Made drug use in music publicly acceptable.

Revitalized the idea of a band (guitar, bass, drums). There was a steady decline in this before they hit the scene.

[Phrenetic]

1. they said they where bigger than jesus
2. they smoked so much weed they forgot there lines
3. first artists to pioneer backwards recording

[Gusto]

1. lennon
2. mccartney
3. harrison

sorry ringo

[Krusha]

1)Being the first and most prominent spiritual psychonauts/rockstars
2)Changing the record industry by discovering time based modulation (flanging, chorusing, etc)
3)Being the music we'd listen to on roadtrips as a family when I was a little kid

[ebbomega]

Two words: George Martin

Invented the concept album, first to record in stereo, a host of other things too that I can't think of right now.

Also, John Lennon was probably one of the first rock musicians that incorporated political activism into his art. Honestly, if you had to pick one Beatles member who was the most important, I'd put him there any time. Paul is a close second but compare their post-Beatles careers and there's no contest. Lennon was banned from the US, wrote "Imagine" and "Give Peace A Chance", and died a rock & roll martyr, possibly the biggest in the 20th Century short of The Day The Music Died. McCartney did a music video with Michael Jackson and appeared on Saturday Night Live a bunch.

[Courtney]

had influence on music today
focused on quality not quantity for length of songs
versatile music in the sense that for each mood theres a song that would fit it

[ebbomega]

Originally Posted by Gusto

1. lennon
2. mccartney
3. harrison

sorry ringo

Ringo's first show at The Cavern, everybody booed him when he first got onstage. Determined, Ringo then performed a ridiculous drum solo (15 or 30 mins or something like that? I remember seeing it in a docu and don't remember the details, google's no help either) and nobody in the audience questioned him for the rest of the night.

He's not the best songwriter and an even worse singer, but that doesn't matter because he's an impeccable drummer.

[Gusto]

i had to pick 3.

[Gusto]

this thread reminds me of the movie "across the universe", which you should see if you haven't already.

[Mangle]

I think Gusto about nailed it, though I'd probably order it thustly:
1. Lennon
2. Harrison
3. McCartney

It's hard to point to three specific reasons why they are the greatest band of all time, but there is no doubt all guitar based music would be different today if they hadn't happened exactly the way they did. Like Ninjaboy said, guitar music was on the way out when they came in. They actually had a hard time getting signed because of it. Since they came along, guitars have been the corner stone of popular and indie music, and much of the style with which bands carry themselves are owed to heavy Beatles influence (with the exception of metal, which obviously traces back to Black Sabbath and, to a lesser extent, Blue Cheer).

Originally Posted by ebbomega

Invented the concept album

Frank Zappa's "Freak Out" came out in July of 1966. It was the first double rock album, and one of the first rock concept albums. Sgt. Peppers came out a year later. Technically, Joe Meek (who would later refuse to produce the Beatles on the grounds they were a bunch of noise) invented the concept album in 1959, a project called I Hear a New World. It's theme was outer space adventure. Though it only received a partial release in 1960 and not fully released till 1991. So the Beatles invented the concept album about as much as Puff Daddy invented the remix, but you could say they popularized it.

[Revolver]

*sigh*...ok lets put this baby to bed .

basically, i'm probably THE BIGGEST most fanatic obsessive beatles fan out there and they are my virtual namesake(revolver) and forever the single greatest influence in my life aside from my dad so here gose....

no.1= brian epstien...go ahead, i DARE anyone to try and debate me on this
no.2= geoff emerick and george martin... say what you will about george martin, but it was the truly brillant and maverick engineering of geoff emerick(combined with the influence of various drugs) that translated the beatles ideas properlly on tape...
no.3= the near perfect ying and yang duo that is lennon/mcartney. mcartney,who is FAR superior musically, is basically a near flawless songwriter. the melodies that man can write are UNPARALLED in any such music that has followed. any pop/rock tune that is written today pretty much owes debt to mcartneys songwritting and melodic style. this, combined with lennons raw intelligence and razor sharp IQ/social commentary pretty much sums up THE single most POWERFUL songcrafting force.

so there it is.

1.brian epstein.
2.eomrick/martin
3.lennon/mcartney

[ebbomega]

Originally Posted by Revolver

*sigh*...ok lets put this baby to bed .

Basically this post sums it all up nicely.

[cubed]

1. yoko ono
2. linda mcartney
3. the maharishi

*ducks*

[Mangle]

I have two America albums produced by George Martin. They're okay I guess. He always kinda struck me as a Phil Knight kinda guy. He added a few key ingredients to pull it all together, but I wouldn't give him total credit for the championships. For example, a lot of the sound effects The Beatles used were traced back to George's early days, producing comedy records. The Maharishi Yogi and Ravi Shankar had an equally significant influence on their mid-'60s and later work.

[-evil-duerr-]

1) pioneers of modern music: their sound and subject matter for the time

2) timeless songwriting. we're still listening!

3) their appeal to such a diverse broad audience. teenagers and their grandparents can appreciate this music.

[Revolver]

Originally Posted by cubed

1. yoko ono
2. linda mcartney
3. the maharishi

*ducks*

GOOOOLD!!

[rawb]

1. TOOK BLACK SOUL AND ROCK MUSIC
2. PUT A WHITE FACE ON IT
3. EVENTUALLY COPIED PET SOUNDS WHEN THAT "WHITE PEOPLE STEALING MUSIC" THING GOT OLD l

[Revolver]

Originally Posted by Mangle

The Maharishi Yogi and Ravi Shankar had an equally significant influence on their mid-'60s and later work.

true but not really.

the experince at rishikesh pretty much gave us the white album BUT, all the beatles were extremely dissoulusioned and dissapointed with the maharishi due to the 'incident' lol.,.....i think it was more the overall mid 60s lsd tinged eastern/mystic/psycedellic influence from george that influenced the music but only slightly with a handful of tracks on rubbersoul,revolver,srgt. peppers......white album let it be and abbey road are scarce with the indian influence.

*sidenote*if you ask me, i think all the crap that lennon ate up from that nut-job leary had more of a impact on the beatles cause when john got ahold of learys PROFITizeing of lsd he went on that crazeh tibetten book of the dead ego death trip wich basically a)killed his wit b)allowed him to be seduced by the witch,Yoko c) allowed paul and the eastmans to take control and pretty much kill the beatles....

[Revolver]

Originally Posted by rawb

1. TOOK BLACK SOUL AND ROCK MUSIC
2. PUT A WHITE FACE ON IT
3. EVENTUALLY COPIED PET SOUNDS WHEN THAT "WHITE PEOPLE STEALING MUSIC" THING GOT OLD l

1, that was elvis
2. elvis and the rolling stones
3. pet sounds was a copy of revolver then pepper was a copy/improvement of pet sounds then brian listend to pepper while high on lsd and went mad cause he realized he could never top pepper and spent years lying in bed dropping acid and listing to it over and over again wich gave us the catchy barenaked ladies hit "IM LYING IN BED..JUST LIKE BRIAN WILSON DID''

[ebbomega]

Originally Posted by Revolver

1, that was elvis
2. elvis and the rolling stones
3. pet sounds was a copy of revolver then pepper was a copy/improvement of pet sounds then brian listend to pepper while high on lsd and went mad cause he realized he could never top pepper and spent years lying in bed dropping acid and listing to it over and over again wich gave us the catchy barenaked ladies hit "IM LYING IN BED..JUST LIKE BRIAN WILSON DID''

Would have thunk I'd learn Barenaked Ladies trivia in a Beatles thread?

[Mangle]

Originally Posted by Revolver

*sidenote*if you ask me, i think all the crap that lennon ate up from that nut-job leary had more of a impact on the beatles cause when john got ahold of learys PROFITizeing of lsd he went on that crazeh tibetten book of the dead ego death trip wich basically a)killed his wit b)allowed him to be seduced by the witch,Yoko c) allowed paul and the eastmans to take control and pretty much kill the beatles....

Good points. I definitely blame Paul more than Yoko for breaking up The Beatles. I think John's solo work was generally quite strong, though, and Yoko was a big part of that. "Oh Yoko" always makes me smile. However, any track with her near a microphone is death, and she was apparently quite mean to John's first born son, so I really have no respect for her either.

[Erin]

Thank you guys. I'm going to show this to my friend at work. :)

[Erin]

*side note*

Originally Posted by Revolver

no.3= the near perfect ying and yang duo that is lennon/mcartney. mcartney,who is FAR superior musically, is basically a near flawless songwriter. the melodies that man can write are UNPARALLED in any such music that has followed. any pop/rock tune that is written today pretty much owes debt to mcartneys songwritting and melodic style. this, combined with lennons raw intelligence and razor sharp IQ/social commentary pretty much sums up THE single most POWERFUL songcrafting force.

I couldn't agree with you more on this.

I think the 2 of them together is what made them so strong.

[Revolver]

Originally Posted by Erin

*side note*



I couldn't agree with you more on this.

I think the 2 of them together is what made them so strong.

its the collabrative offest...

actually people that you offest are usually the most powerful in your life.

offsets are powerful stuff and wonderful things come out of them.